Boutique e-music maker debuts all-in-one portable groove machine

For the last few months, New Zealand's Synthstrom Audible has been showing off a new portable sequencer, synth and sampler at a small number of invite-only demonstrations in Wellington and Auckland. With prototyping now in the rear view mirror, the company has announced that the Deluge will go up for pre-order next month.

Sat atop the 12 x 8.2 x 1.8-in (305 x 208 x 46 mm) enclosure is an array of full RGB pads, which can be used to adjust parameters, set sequence patterns or used as a live instrument on a two-dimensional grid. System designer Rohan Hill reckons that Deluge's 64 MB of system memory should allow for "many thousands of notes" to be sequenced, and it's reported able to work with up 12 minutes of mono CD-quality samples in one go from SDHC media.

The Deluge sports two controlled voltage outputs for connecting to other hardware, which can each be configured to volts per octave or hertz per octave. There are also four configurable gate/trigger outputs, and MIDI in and out. It has its own microphone, but sports mic/line input, too.

Sounds can be output through an internal speaker, or routed to external amps and speakers via two 0.25-in line outputs. A 3.5 mm headphone jack also allows for private listening.

Portable power is provided by an included Li-ion battery, though how much play time users can expect between charges has not yet been revealed. Also unknown at the time of writing is the expected price. More information, photos and videos are due to be available from September 20. Synthstrom Audible plans to start pre-orders on October 25.